Three years is a fair stretch for any piece of technology. If you’re still wearing a Pixel Watch 2 and the Pixel Watch 5 is now on sale, is it time to upgrade, or is the old watch on your wrist still good enough?
Design and Display
The Pixel Watch 2 comes in a single 41mm size. The Pixel Watch 5 keeps the signature rounded design but adds a 45mm version, giving those who prefer a larger screen more choice.
Both watches use circular AMOLED displays, but the Watch 5 steps up to an Actua 360 LTPO panel. Peak brightness is higher, making outdoor visibility noticeably better, and it supports a 1–60Hz adaptive refresh rate for improved efficiency and a lower minimum brightness in always-on mode. All told, it’s a far more modern-feeling screen.
When it comes to water resistance, the two watches are evenly matched, so there’s no need to worry when swimming or showering.
Performance and Software
The Pixel Watch 2 runs on the older Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 processor with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It can be upgraded all the way to Wear OS 7, but it’s starting to struggle with more demanding tasks.
The Pixel Watch 5 uses an optimised Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 chipset paired with a Cortex-M55 co-processor, with RAM and storage bumped up to 3GB and 64GB respectively. Google claims an overall performance gain of around 20%. In practice, that means smoother navigation, faster app switching, more assured handling of Gemini features, and far more room for offline maps and media.
On the software front, the Watch 5 ships with Wear OS 7, bringing deeper Gemini integration, proactive suggestions, generative watch faces and improved gesture controls. The Watch 2 can run most of these features too, but its limited memory and processing power mean it’s a touch behind on both smoothness and future compatibility.
Battery Life
Battery life is one of the Watch 5’s clearest advantages.
The Pixel Watch 2 has a 306mAh battery that lasts about 24 hours with the always-on display enabled, and typically between 24 and 30 hours in real-world use. For most people, charging every few days simply isn’t realistic.
The Watch 5 is a genuine improvement. The 41mm version has a 332mAh battery offering up to 30 hours with the always-on display on, while the 45mm version carries a 465mAh battery good for up to 40 hours. Battery Saver mode can stretch that further still.
Both watches support fast charging, but thanks to its larger battery, especially in the 45mm version, the Watch 5 goes a long way towards easing the daily charging anxiety that Watch 2 users have grown used to.
Health, Fitness and Safety
Thanks to deep Fitbit integration, both watches accurately track heart rate, blood oxygen, ECG, sleep, stress-related signals and workout data. The Watch 2 also comes with a multi-path optical sensor, a skin temperature sensor and a cEDA (electrodermal activity) sensor.
Building on that foundation, the Watch 5 adds a range of new health tools:
- Blood pressure trend tracking
- Insulin resistance trend analysis
- Breathing emergency detection
- Improved dual-band GPS, which Google says delivers more accurate route tracking
- Enhanced sleep tracking and additional fitness features
On top of that, ongoing AI improvements make the Watch 5’s health coach and proactive suggestions genuinely more useful. If you value health insights or precise outdoor tracking, these additions are well worth having.
Software Support
This may be the most compelling reason to upgrade.
Software and security updates for the Pixel Watch 2 come to an end in October this year. It will still handle the basics afterwards, but it will no longer receive new Wear OS features or regular security patches, and features such as Safety Signal on LTE models will gradually be switched off.
The Pixel Watch 5, by contrast, is supported until around 2029. That means updates for the next three years, which matters a great deal if you regularly pay with your watch, receive notifications from sensitive accounts, or simply want to keep getting new features.
Should You Upgrade?
For most people still using a Watch 2, the Pixel Watch 5’s longer support window, better display, stronger performance and significantly improved battery life make it an upgrade worth considering.
If your Watch 2 is already starting to feel sluggish, or you’re concerned about security and features once updates stop, then the Watch 5 is the obvious next step. That said, if your current watch still meets your day-to-day needs, there’s no great rush to replace it.